The Emerging Police State

Written by: Former Law Enforcement Officer

So I set out to research and report my findings on the impending police state in America. I’ll get to this momentarily, however I feel the need to touch upon a few housekeeping items first. We’ll start with my background.  I was a police officer for the better part of a decade.  I hold degrees in Public Administration, Law Enforcement and have a couple thousand hours of training in everything from defensive tactics, active shooter, riot control and dozens of other law enforcement topics. That’s as much as I can reveal and remain anonymous at the moment.  Needless to say, I have a unique perspective on police politics and the direction it appears that we as a nation  are heading, in reference to the militarization of civilian police forces.  It is a complex issue and cannot be fully explained in a single sitting.  The social, political, financial, ethical and specific situational factors are all connected and important relationships here often go overlooked.  All are pieces of a much larger puzzle that we must recognize and incorporate if solutions to problems are to be found.  You’ll find I speak quite vaguely at times but for good reason.  The fundamental problems we are having all relate to communication, understanding, compassion and empathy between us and those who we find ourselves oppressed by. It’s a two way street.  That is all we have ever asked for.  That is all we strive for. When you have these things, the trust and freedom that we all want will follow.  I digress, however I hope to  touch upon these topics in the future.

I cannot proceed without first talking about the elephant in the room; Ferguson.  I still have friends at the police department where I started my career.  I have discussed with them at great lengths, both sides of the situation. As at the time we did not have all the facts, much of the conversations were more philosophical in nature.  There is no doubt about it.  This situation sucks.  I know what it’s like to be in a situation that jumps off and you feel your heart thump like it’s in your throat.  Trust me, cops get scared.  They have to in order to stay alive.  Every one of these situations that pops up, where an officer apparently used excessive force or disproportionate force, there is a single particular moment that determines the outcome of the event.  There is always a transition during an encounter when an officer interprets his subject’s actions as hostile and has to make a decision as to what is appropriate action to take to overcome said hostility.  This moment is where situations are either resolved correctly or the officer succumbs to the adrenaline dump which just occurred and goes all Dirty Harry.  This moment is where lives are saved or lives are lost.

An officer needs to be able to navigate, observe, respond and remain clear minded, regardless of what is happening to him or around him. The ability to focus under extreme stress and make accurate assessments of threats, then act accordingly is what police need to be able to do.  Well guess what?  From my experience, the majority of cops throw everything out the window when the shit hits the fan. Not all, but most. I’d say, around 25% of all cops I have encountered have the experience,  knowledge, understanding and judgment to handle the most intense of situations correctly. The other 75% aren’t monsters (though some are), they are just unintelligent, untrained, and panic when the heat is on.  These 75% make it through the encounter but usually in a manner which demonstrates poor safety technique or stomps on the rights of the accused. Disproportionate force is a daily occurrence across the country, but you never hear about these cases because they are not news worthy and usually, through creative articulation, are covered up within the incident report. One thing that can prevent incidents where officers totally lose their shit when the heat is on, is training.  This is where politics enters the equation; internal politics, that is, usually between departments within a police agency or between the governing body and the police department.  Budgets determine training allowances, and who controls budgets? Politicians.  I’ll go into the ins and outs of budgets and politics at a later time.  Anyway, just remember that whoever controlled the police budgets in Ferguson also has blood on their hands, as I promise you, police training in Ferguson is most likely non-existent.   Additional budgets for police almost NEVER result in more cops on the street, especially now. Additional budgets usually go to raises, equipment and training.  Trust me, I have seen more cowboy cops with no training then I care to admit.  You want your police properly trained.

When police act using proper methods, incidents like Ferguson DO NOT HAPPEN. If the incident went down in Ferguson like I heard it did, then Mike Brown was murdered, plain and simple.  If Brown was running away from the scene, regardless of the crime, shots are not authorized.  Period. If this is actually what happened, there will be justice.  Trust me, police departments will eat their own at every opportunity.    One last observation of the initial Ferguson incident before I move on; Why the hell is the media calling his actions in the convenience store a robbery? I am not familiar with Missouri law, but from my experience, Brown’s actions were not consistent with a robbery.  For a robbery to have taken place, the use of force had to affect the taking of money or property from the person of another, blah blah blah statute stuff.  That did not happen here.  Brown appears to have taken the cigars and attempted to walk out with them. Snapshot: an attempted retail theft is occurring, a misdemeanor at best.  The clerk then follows Brown and attempts to recover the cigars.  Brown grabs him by the throat and pushes him back during his attempt to get away.  Snapshot: Brown did not take any money or property from the cashier, therefore no robbery occurred.  What he did commit was called resisting a merchant and possibly a battery but usually the resisting a merchant charge contains the battery charge itself.  The media is attempting to portray Brown as a gangsta hoodlum who goes around robbing stores.  I have even seen Facebook pictures of him with a gun, posted by the media.  An unarmed kid gets shot and the media treats him like another Travon.  Disgusting, regardless if he jacked some blunts or not.  As I sit here, they just announced the curfew which will be imposed from midnight through 5 am.  Big mistake. By the time this is published it will have happened already.  I hope no one was hurt.

Now I am going to attempt to tackle the subject of the impending police state in America. Is it coming? Is it not? The answer is….I hope not.  When one looks at trends in crowd control and the factors that have led other nations to a police state, one would absolutely determine that the current path we’re on is taking us there.  Hell, if one were to trace the rise and fall of civilizations over the past few millennia, it would be a no-brainer to determine the inevitable police state, regardless of what’s going on today.  It is difficult for me to explain the situation without pointing out some fundamental factors that often go ignored.  There is a micro view and a macro view, much like everything else in life.  The police force is made up of individuals.  Individuals who all come from different backgrounds, education, beliefs and personal moral value.  On a daily basis, the individual is forced to adapt to a police culture, which often conflicts with the personal belief systems held by the individual.  Some adapt better than others.  I myself took great pride in helping people and arresting people who truly deserved it.  There are some situations where the officer has no choice in his actions.  If an officer responds to a domestic disturbance, odds are someone is going to jail. Not necessarily because they deserve to, but agency policies are governed almost completely by a CYA mentality, and an unsupported allegation can lead to a physical arrest regardless.  Due to policies like this, the individual is sometimes forced to go against their own moral beliefs and make an unsupported arrest because if they don’t, they risk losing their career, pension etc. A single incident can sink a police career and no cop is willing to lose everything just to save a single innocent person from going to jail.  I point this out because it is necessary to separate the individual officer from the organization which he is representing.  As much as we need understanding and compassion from our oppressors, we need to be as equally understanding of the dilemmas the individual officer has to deal with when he is forced into situations by his superiors that he fundamentally disagrees with.  This is important because when protestors turn violent, they are not hurting the agency involved, they are hurting the individual.  I guarantee that there are officers in Ferguson who are forced into a situation that they never thought they’d be in and don’t want to be there.  None of those officers, however, are willing to lose their everything and disobey their commanders.  They are just following orders.  The problem is, where have we heard that before? This dilemma is what troubles me most when I see protestors and police clash.  Individuals get hurt and the system just churns on, unaffected.

Many of the signs of a police state are already in effect. Surveillance is everywhere. The CIA and NSA, even after being caught spying on Americans illegally were just like “oops” and then continued completely unabated and backed by congress.  I can’t even get started on the totality of the system and disgusting crimes committed by those who are supposed to be looking out for us, we’d be here all week. I will say however that the actions of these agencies are the single biggest indication of an emerging police state.  Personally I hate the term police state, as when the term comes to mind, I envision SWAT officers on every corner asking to see my papers.  This is not the reality of a modern police state, not in America anyway, not yet.  The reality of a police state in America is much more subtle.  I choose to refer to it as an integrated police culture. It starts with the invasion of privacy, the monitoring of communications, implementation of laws like the Patriot Act and extends as far as manipulation of the media and outright and intentional deflection from real issues that matter to the cheez whiz we are bombarded with every day on television.  I have even read what I determined to be credible evidence that international news figures Anderson Cooper and William F Buckley were CIA plants.  I personally watched a video of former CIA chief William Colby testifying before a congressional oversight committee.  When asked if the CIA has ever planted operatives in the US news media, he responded by saying that he would prefer to answer that question in an executive session, which means the public will never hear his answer. You tell me, what scares you more, SWAT officers on every corner or the intentional manipulation of your mind through a carefully controlled media? I can’t answer that, but the latter is already in effect and has been for decades.  It’s these subtle societal shifts that indicate a police culture more-so than the outright intrusions by police.

Now there are several other factors which would lead one to the conclusion that we are heading toward a police state.  The change in appearance and function of police has gone from your happy go lucky Andy Griffith police figure, to the officer who looks like he took a wrong turn somewhere near Baghdad.  The intimidation of citizens is an absolute sign of a police state.  The external tactical vests are becoming more prevalent for everyday street officers.  The AR-15 is now a standard issue weapon for most police departments.  The appearance of modern day police officers scares people.  The shift from feeling protected by police to being afraid of them is widespread.  All of these are micro level shifts that are again indicators of an emerging police culture. I have first hand knowledge that the militarization of police forces is being driven by the military industrial complex and not for reasons you might think.  The last agency I worked for was in the process of acquiring multiple armored humvees from military surplus.  The bottom line is they were cheap and the agency was approached by US government military surplus salesmen.  So the war machine churns on, perfectly good military supplies  are surplussed to make way for brand new weaponry and machinery.  Completely unnecessary but those government contractors need to get paid right?  The financial greed of military manufacturers is definitely a contributing cause to the emerging police culture.

I could go on all day pointing out the signs of the integrated police culture that is saturating our society.  I choose, however, not to continue to put forth all the reasons why I believe this cultural shift is occurring.  It is. I choose to stand up and shout all the things we need to do to prevent it.  In this day and age, the fight cannot be won with guns and Molotov cocktails.  This fight can only be won with words and ideas, with psychology and technology.  Get out of the house and protest the federal government’s “legal” invasions of privacy. Protest the military industrial complex and it’s reach into your hometown.  Protest the manipulation of the media by our intelligence community.  Stand up for what you know is right. Remain peaceful but make your voice heard.  This is your life and your country.  Do not let your freedoms slip away.  Get out and vote.  We still have to use the system to beat the system. Our time is now. Always remember, knowledge is free.

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